Introduction to PDL/81

Contents

The Story So Far

The computer industry has never been noted for its tentative approach
to new product development.
New ideas, hailed at one moment as technological breakthroughs, seem
to become obsolete even as they're removed from their cartons.

In contrast PDL is an idea from the 1970's which today, more
than twenty years later, remains the de facto standard for
procedure-intensive software design.
Other tools have come and gone, leaving PDL more popular and
more widely used than ever throughout the world.

The ideas behind PDL were formulated by
Caine, Farber & Gordon, Inc. (CFG) in 1973.
They were presented
at the National Computing Conference in 1975 where
CFG first made public the significant productivity gains achieved.

From this beginning, PDL has been adopted world-wide.
It is used across a broad spectrum of applications for projects of all
sizes.
In almost every case, it was chosen on the strength of the most
genuine advertising of all: word-of-mouth.

Today, the original PDL/74 has been superseded by PDL/81
which offers considerable power and flexibility.
Yet the ideas behind PDL, and the original language, itself,
have not changed at all.